Editorial: Monk plea deal shows the real Blagojevich

Thursday

Oct 22, 2009 at 12:01 AMOct 22, 2009 at 8:18 PM

It's another big week for Rod Blagojevich and his ongoing efforts to forge a second career as a talk show celebrity and reality TV star. How we wish that the enablers of Blagojevich’s delusions of stardom would read the plea agreement entered Tuesday in federal court by his longtime friend and former chief of staff Lon Monk.

It's another big week for Rod Blagojevich and his ongoing efforts to forge a second career as a talk show celebrity and reality TV star.

We learned on Monday that our indicted former governor will be among the contestants on Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” Alongside fellow contestants including Cyndi Lauper, Sharon Osbourne and others of varying degrees of celebrity past and present, Blagojevich will continue his campaign to remake himself from disgraced public official to persecuted, lovable everyman. As has been the case throughout Blagojevich’s extended media tour, viewers and cast members of “Celebrity Apprentice” no doubt will come to know Blagojevich as “the governor from that one state who has funny hair and a funny name and tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat.”

How we wish that the enablers of Blagojevich’s delusions of stardom would read the plea agreement entered Tuesday in federal court by his longtime friend and former chief of staff Lon Monk.

In its 30 pages, the agreement does not mention Barack Obama or his Senate seat. There is no mention of getting newspaper editorial writers fired in exchange for help selling a nationally known baseball stadium. There’s no “Sopranos”-style swearing. Yet of all the documents filed thus far in the case against Blagojevich, this in our judgment is the most damning in illustrating his true character and motives.

Monk’s plea agreement may be devoid of the cloak-and-dagger intrigue that dripped from the criminal complaint filed after Blagojevich’s arrest in December, but it neatly sums up Blagojevich’s frame of mind regarding government.

“After Blagojevich’s election, there were times when Blagojevich, (Christopher) Kelly, (Antoin ‘Tony’) Rezko, and Defendant met together to discuss the status of their efforts to make money using their control over the State of Illinois government … The amounts of profits that were associated with the different ideas were typically in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per deal.”

That's the Blagojevich we in Illinois have come to know — ruthlessly cynical to the core while outwardly playing the role of populist hero. On page 15 of Monk’s plea agreement we find Blagojevich — self-styled champion of health care for all — withholding money from Children’s Memorial Hospital to force a campaign donation.

There’s more of course — shaking down a horse track owner in exchange for a bill signing, a complicated pension bond deal that allegedly enriched (or would eventually enrich) the Blagojevich gang of four, some road-building graft. But to the national TV producers and their audiences outside Illinois, those are just cumbersome and annoying details.

They want the goofy guy with the great hair and ready smile who tried to sell the president’s old seat in the Senate and swore like a mob boss on federal wiretaps.